d enveloped in the usual scientific
slang.

The meeting held in the Club House, 24 Monument Square, Baltimore, on
the evening of the 13th, had been therefore disorderly in the highest
degree. Long before the appointed hour, the great hall was densely
packed and the greatest uproar prevailed. Vice-President Wilcox took the
chair, and all was comparatively quiet until Colonel Bloomsbury, the
Honorary Secretary in Marston's absence, commenced to read Belfast's
dispatch. Then the scene, according to the account given in the next
day's _Sun_, from whose columns we condense our report, actually
"beggared description." Roars, yells, cheers, counter-cheers, clappings,
hissings, stampings, squallings, whistlings, barkings, mewings, cock
crowings, all of the most fearful and demoniacal character, turned the
immense hall into a regular pandemonium. In vain did President Wilcox
fire off his detonating bell, with a report on ordinary occasions as
loud as the roar of a small piece of ordnance. In the dreadful noise
then prevailing it was no more heard than the fizz of a lucifer match.

Some cries, however, made themselves occasionally heard in the pauses of
the din. "Read! Read!" "Dry up!" "Sit down!" "Give him an egg!" "Fair
play!" "Hurrah for Barbican!" "Down with his enemies!" "Free Speech!"
"Belfast won't bite you!" "He'd like to bite Barbican, but his teeth
aren't sharp enough!" "Barbican's a martyr to science, let's hear his
fate!" "Martyr be hanged; the Old Man is to the good yet!" "Belfast is
the grandest name in Science!" "Groans for the grandest name!" (Awful
groans.) "Three cheers for Old Man Barbican!" (The exceptional strength
alone of the walls saved the building, from being blown out by an
explosion in which at least 5,000 pairs of lungs participated.)

"Three cheers for M'Nicholl and the Frenchman!" This was followed by
another burst of cheering so hearty, vigorous and long continued that
the scientific party, or _Belfasters_ as they were now called, seeing
that further prolongation of the meet was perfectly useless, moved to
adjourn. It was carried unanimously. President Wilcox left the chair,
the meeting broke up in the wildest disorder--the scientists rather
crest fallen, but the Barbican men quite jubilant for having been so
successful in preventing the reading of that detested dispatch.

Little sleeping was done that night in Baltimore, and less business next
day. Even in the public schools so little work was